ABSTRACT
The main factors in the transformation of Jewish culture in the early modern period were several and came from both outside and inside the Jewish world. The forced migrations themselves played an important role as they led not simply to the relocation of individuals and entire communities but also to encounters between different Jewish traditions. The Spanish Jews “exported” their own cultural heritage to those places where they settled after the expulsion, whether in North Africa or the Ottoman lands in Turkey and the Balkans. After a few generations, they had imposed their cultural hegemony over the local Jewish communities, the Sephardi tradition deeply transforming and in many cases replacing the traditions of, for example, the Greek-speaking Romaniot Jews of the formerly Byzantine lands.
